‘Teen Wolf’ Recap: ‘Orphaned’

So much happened on this week’s Teen Wolf that was not exactly pleasant, but one thing we were surprisingly okay with was Kate’s return. We admit we’re kind of loving how completely remorseless she is. She knows what she wants—in this case, to know who the Benefactor is—and she will stop at nothing to get it. We don’t see a redemption arc in Kate’s near, or even distant future, but it’s kind of refreshing to have it be a female character, for once, whose driven by pure instinct, desire, and the need to survive. For now, that means killing pretty much anything or anyone who gets in the way of her quest for answers concerning the dead pool.

She’s having about as much success as our pack on that front. None of the assassins they’ve come up against have provided any tangible answers as to the Benefactor’s identity. They either die before they can talk, like when Peter killed the mouthless, military tomahawk wielding killer, or the police drag them off before they can get any information out of them, like Violet.

With Violet in police custody and Garrett on the run, Scott decides he needs to figure out more about these two assassins who are also known as the Orphans. That maybe explains their decidedly undisciplined actions, but it doesn’t reveal anything about the dead pool itself. So naturally Scott breaks into Garrett’s locker. He tells Liam that he doesn’t find anything but really he takes the piles of money he finds inside and brings it home. See, the Mama McCall is having some money troubles, and Scott is nothing if not a mama’s boy. It’s misguided, and probably going to blow up in his face, but that’s just the kind of guy Scott is.

After saving Brett, the poisoned werewolf lacrosse player, Derek decides to head over to the high school. Are we sure it’s legal for him to just show up at school every week? With that manly scruff people can’t possibly assume he’s still a student there. Anyway, Derek has come to enlist Malia in finding Brett’s pack, whose favorite hangout is in the woods. And no one knows the woods better than Malia. Nothing good ever happens in there, it seems. Earlier, in those same woods, Liam was kidnapped by a vengeful Garrett, and plopped into a giant well.

While we worry about the fate of our newest pack member, Lydia and Stiles confront another problem: Deputy Parrish. Last episode we learned that Parrish is in fact on the hit list, which makes him some sort of supernatural creature. When Parrish learns what he’s worth—a whopping five million dollars—he quips that maybe he should just kill himself. Lydia disagrees with this statement, and so do we. In a world of selfish people, Parrish is one of those selfless gems that come along so very rarely. Best to keep him around. Stiles points out that they have bigger fish to fry, namely cracking the last third of the list. And for that, they need resident banshee, Meredith.

Lydia, Stiles, and Parrish head back to Eichen House to find Meredith except she tells them she can’t help because the Benefactor doesn’t want her to. So does that mean the Benefactor wanted her to help last time? Either way, Lydia and Stiles are on their own now. Stiles puts his detective skills to the test and rationalizes that banshees predict death, and the last two names have both been dead people, so Lydia should use her banshee senses to predict the next key person’s death. Okay, so we probably should have seen it coming that Derek was the last key. We may rag on him about his seeming inability to smile, and his scruff, but we do love him and definitely don’t want him to die.

Meanwhile, Garrett is back and blackmailing Scott. In exchange for Liam, Scott has to use his werewolf strength to stop the van moving Violet to a federal facility. Except around the time they catch up with the van, is when everything starts going south. As they approach, they see the vehicle is overturned and the Sheriff and Scott’s dad are on the ground, injured. Scott screams “Dad!” and yet he still rushes over to the Sheriff first, which is kind of heartbreaking.

It looks like the assailants were not werewolves but the weird skeleton mask creatures that are helping Kate. One of them stabs Garrett right through the chest and we know we said we were over teenagers dying on this show, but Garrett kind of deserved it. Let’s just hope he stays dead, unlike pretty much everyone else we hate in Beacon Hills. The skeleton people also stab Scott but he’s a werewolf so the worst he gets is having the knife pulled out by the one and only Papa Argent.

He and Scott leave to find Satomi, and instead are confronted by Kate. She says she doesn’t want a fight, but knowing Kate, that’s very hard to believe. Even so, she does command her followers to stop before they kill her brother, which is nice of her. While that’s going on, Scott stumbles upon Violet’s dead body in the back. Which is good because she can’t kill any people we like, but bad because with both Violet and Garrett dead, the blackmail deal is sort of off.

Except then something awesome happens: Liam calls for Scott. Maybe that’s not what he’s consciously doing but when he does, Scott hears him; he hears his beta and you can bet he comes for him. Scott having a beta, seeing him become a mentor in a way Derek never quite could, is probably the highlight of this season so far. Amidst all the death and horror, there’s Scott’s sense of compassion and pure desire to protect. And then there’s Liam, who has been a werewolf for about five minutes, but already totally trusts his alpha. Well, who wouldn’t trust Scott I’m-Gonna-Save-Everyone McCall?

Next week on Teen Wolf, Are Peter and Kate really a team now? Will we ever find out what’s going on with Derek? And the most burning question of all, what is Deputy Parrish and why is he worth five million dollars?